Supermarkets

To shop is to engage in psychological conflict, at least it is if you buy your stuff in supermarkets. This is not an idle or hyperbolic claim. It is the plain, unvarnished truth.

Supermarkets see their customers as units to be manipulated. They devote huge resources to this process despite the fact that at the end of the day it is very likely a zero sum game. People probably don't buy any more and if they do the amount involved may be fairly small.

What they are trying to do is to get you to spend more in their store. They are simply trying to outflank their competitors but this competition costs you in two ways.

Firstly, if the supermarkets did not engage in these expensive tricks they could probably sell their products cheaper. Secondly, part of the game is to keep you in the store longer. They are deliberately stealing your time.

Everything is done to confuse. There are no windows. There are no clocks. Lighting is subdued, perhaps even blue. This is a strange, alien, possibly even aquatic world.

Then the supermarket will make sure you don't know where what you're trying to buy is. Goods are constantly shifted around. You may think this is in order to give prominence to seasonal goods or promotions, but it isn't. That's just a smokescreen.

The real reason for all the expensive shelf stacking is that they don't want you to whizz round the store on autopilot, buying only the things you always buy. They want you to look.

If you are forced to search you may find things you decide to buy on impulse. Impulse buying is what it is all about for the supermarket. They know you are going to buy the stuff on your shopping list so to increase their revenue they need to encourage impulse buying. In addition to forcing you to look, they keep you in the store longer, and they have reams of evidence that tells them the longer you are there, the more you spend.

Hence the store designs which attempt to keep you walking round a pre-ordained route, even when you only want a tin of beans. Hence the lengthy queues at check outs which make you think 'if I'm here I might as well buy several items, since it's not worth queueing for one'.

Probably the worst thing is that these days goods are not individually priced. Supermarket labels seem deliberately designed to confuse and mislead. For example today I saw a label which said 3 tins for £2, with the £2 in blue and hard to read letters. Underneath there was a large 60p (in fact the price of just one tin). Anyone who looked at it quickly would think that it was three tins for 60p, a bargain. As it happened 3 tins for £2 was not much of a bargain at all.

It often takes a lot of effort to work out exactly the label that refers to the product you are interested in (if there is a label of any kind). But does it matter? Supermarket goods are cheaper, aren't they?

They probably are but the supermarkets are constantly re-modelling their pricing in order to find out how they can maximise their income. For example the supermarket I use charges 82p for a pack of two garlic loaves, but only 40p if you buy one! It has been doing this off and on (another technique supermarkets use is only to supply goods intermittently to force you to buy other similar but probably more expensive products) for months. Why it does it, I do not know. But everyone must agree there should be a label that shows you it is cheaper to buy two individual packets rather than a pack of two!

Of course the council's consumer protection department could probably deal with this but they don't seem to bother. Perhaps they are too busy chasing people selling pirated DVDs, in order to prop up the multinational distribution companies!

Walking back to hippyness?

I was never a particularly fast walker, but over the years I've noticed that I have been getting slower relative to the speed travelled by Londoners. Until recently I put this down to ageing. I thought I was simply getting slower. But there may be another cause.

Dealing With Time (Director Xavier Marquis/ producer Bruno Nahon) says there is scientific proof the pace of modern life is quicker than it was a decade ago. Apparently the speed of urban pedestrians is being monitored and it is getting faster...

Modern life presents many ironies. For example our cities are cleaner and less polluted than ever, yet we are more concerned about damage to the environment than we have ever been. Mechanisation has automated many tasks and made most of the remaining work much quicker and easier, yet a higher percentage of the under 60s and over 20s work than ever before and we are working long hours, perhaps even longer than a generation ago.

Almost everyone I know is busy almost all the time. Yet the press says there are millions of couch potatoes out there watching tv 30 hours a week or more.

It is very odd that we seem to be putting more pressure on ourselves and are taking the benefits of scientific and technological progress in terms of additional wealth rather than extra leisure hours.

Is this a conscious choice? Are people spurning leisure and driving themselves harder in pursuit of some material gain? I can't remember anyone ever asking my opinion on the subject. Mind you, I can't remember anybody asking me my opinion about most things....

Did anyone tell GCHQ there were no WMDs?

I have a DVD issued to people who might want to join British Intelligence (though I have never had that ambition).

It promotes SIGINT (Cheltenham GCHQ) and whilst it doesn't seem to give anything much away, it does have a heading "combating Weapons of Mass Destruction", which suggests it is either very old or no-one told GCHQ there were no WMDs...

Not ruling but smiling

It is strange that in 1934 when Von Sternberg made The Scarlet Empress he conveys the fact that the Grand Duke Peter is a half wit by the simple device of having him smile and grin all the time. He looks not unlike a combination between Frederick The Great and Tony Blair.

Sherbet fountain

One of the last conversations I had with my mum was about Barratt sherbet fountains.

My mum used to eat these things whenever she had heart burn, or some such ailment. She reckoned they were somehow medicinal.

But for some strange reason sherbet fountains disappeared. In fact almost all sherbet products seem to have been lost from the shops, though you do sometimes see flying saucers about (I mean the sweets not the UFOs).

I reminded my mum that in the past she had consumed quite a large quantity of these things and used to swear they did her good.

'Yes', she remembered, 'I'll have to get some the next time I go to the supermarket'.

'You will be lucky,' I replied. 'They seem to have disappeared'.

Yesterday I was in Barrow on Furness and happened to see some of the familiar old sweet in a supermarket. Too late for my mum. She had died, though not, I think, as a result of a lack of sherbet.

I bought some tubes and they looked the same; but there was something different about them. It was almost impossible to open them.

Whereas once the liquorice had poked out of the end, now it is all sealed up. It occurred to me that it is no longer regarded as safe to have naked liquorice. It has to be covered (a) in case some terrorist plants dangerous substances in the packet (b) to stop the spread of germs which might leap from dirty hands to unsold dib dab lying in the shop.

What a world we live in that naked liquorice is no longer permissible! When did this happen to us?

Smaller audiences

More channels, more choice, what does it mean for the people who run the core channels that have been around a long time? Apparently it is not acceptable to keep doing the same sort of stuff to smaller and smaller audiences. That seems to defy logic, unless we are all going to watch a lot more tv, which seems unlikely in these days of multiple video platforms. When we had just two channels (BBC & ITV) audiences could sometimes be astronomical. As more channels came along the programmes that commanded those huge viewing figures came along less frequently. It is so obvious that this process is continuing that it hardly needs to be stated.

Yet the tv executives are looking for programmes like Time Team, Who Do You think You Are and Top Gear. These are great brands. Wonderful tv programmes but there must be a limit to the number of shows like these there can be!

In pursuit of these huge audiences tv executives have learnt a lot about the people who sit in front of the screens. Science and history, apparently mean nothing to them. Intelligent provocation motivates them to keep watching. They are interested in food and the morbidly fascinating.

There is a tendency to skew programmes towards old white men, certainly when it comes to the presenters. The BBC seems to be trying quite hard to move away from this concentration. (The idea is to offer more than a retirement package for elderly news readers). Other channels seem to be less committed to this.

Bang Goes the Theory is a great way of presenting a science programme to a younger audience. Victorian Farm appealed to a huge number of people, particularly women.

The executives say there is a commitment to the authored documentary (which makes it sound as if the genre is doomed).

Am I getting old or is the anti-elderly prejudice growing in tv?

Films at Sheffield

Probably the scariest film I saw at Sheffield was Videocracy (director/producer Erik Gandini), a study of Silvio Berlusconi's Italy. It is not the first to compare the Italian president to Mussolini but it is the most convincing. Perhaps the most frightening idea it conveyed is that Berlusconi is not just a Mussolini, essentially an Italian phenomena, but a template for future media baron/ porn dealer/ controversial business tycoon/ political top dog. This film should be seen by everyone who values their personal freedom.

Petition (director Zhao Liang/ producer Sylvie Blum), is a powerful if uneven film. It is certainly not very well constructed but the picture it reveals of life under a brutal and uncaring state, looks more like Chinese fascism than any kind of communism.

Thank heavens for Best Worst Movie (director Michael Paul Stephenson/ producer Lindsay Stephenson), a marvellous, joyful work, this tells the story of the people who made the worst ever film (Troll 2). A thoroughly wonderful documentary.

P-Star Rising (director Gabriel Noble/ producer Marjan Tehrani), the story of a child rap star, made me wonder a lot about some of the ethical issues involved in shooting such a subject. But it has to be admitted that this is a very well made documentary about an absorbing subject.

American: The Bill Hicks Story (directors/producers Matt Harlock & Paul Thomas) is another example of the cartoon, or animated documentary (Waltz With Bashir, Persepolis), though it actually largely uses still photos. Technically, I think it is a better job (it has more dimensionality) but it is really a piece for Bill Hicks fans. I think it might have been a better film if it had been shorter.

Companion of Kings (directors/producers Tara Manandhar & David O'Neil) is about greyhound racing. It's the sort of film I should have made instead of Dogs Gone, though I still feel Dogs Gone has value.

American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein (directors/producers David Ridgen & Nicolas Rossier) is a great film. It shows that documentary really can handle complex arguments. All those who think that tv is all about Big Brother and East Enders should be forced to watch this just so they can glimpse an entirely different world.

Also worthy of note were Bastardy (director Amiel Courtin-Wilson, producer Philippa Campey), Junior (driector Jenna Rosher, producer Randy Rogers) and Horses (director Liz Mermin, producer Aisling Ahmed). Moving To Mars (director Mat Whitecross, producer Karen Katz) promised much but whilst it was beautifully shot (at least in parts) it didn't really deliver. BFI Present Coal & Steel Images of Industry showed some quite remarkable film, particularly an Edwardian documentary about coal mining and coal pickers.

1 Day

Last week I went to a screening of a film called 1 Day made by Blast! Film production for Film4/Channel4. According to the director Penny Woolcock the film has been banned in five West Midlands cities, (presumably Coventry, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Wallsall and somewhere else... Sorry my geography isn't very good). The method by which the police are banning this film is apparently quite extraordinary.

They are touring local cinemas telling them to take it off. They say it is a public safety issue. If there is gangland violence as a result of the film the cinema will in some strange way be responsible. It would be quite a brave cinema manager to go ahead with a screening after such a warning, but the police do not seem to have any legal power to do this.

The film is a cheapo picture shot in a month on a £700k budget using a 750 camera. Despite the tiny budget it is often truly beautiful and surprisingly well made. It is a cross between West Side Story and Pulp Fiction. Supposedly, the first Hip Hop musical made in this country, but with a surprisingly high body count.

The ending of nearly all the main characters in the film is so relentlessly awful that when it was shown in local community screenings the police were saying that it should be shown to schools as a shocking reminder of how ghastly a life of drug dealing and crime is.

However, some anonymous tipster has apparently told the police (or possibly one of the local councils) that three local gangs (the Johnsons, Burgers and Raiders) planned a rumble over the film. They called it a shoot out.

The lead character in the film one Dylan Duffus who looks about as threatening as Lenny Henry, claimed to have come from this community and to have had friends who had met a grisly end as a result of gangland violence.

Duffus said something I found quite interesting. He had been told by someone from the local community that "you have got to watch the monster within". Quite what the monster is, I don't know but it sounds like a line from Heart of Darkness.

This picture of Birmingham makes the place look about as threatening as Milton Keynes on a sunny summer day, which despite the fact that I don't know the place very well, is certainly not my experience. One woman in the audience at the screening complained very vociferously that this film was just black people killing each other and had absolutely no positive role models.

While this is true I'm not altogether convinced that one film has to provide role models as well as telling, what is an interesting, if blood thirsty, story, told in a fairly compelling way. As you may imagine, given the budget constraints and the fact that Penny Woolcock is a middle class white woman, there are all the usual West Indian stereotypes...

This addition is from Shooting People (November 19, 2009):

"There was a recent screening planned at the International Black Festival in Birmingham. Again no cinema would let them show it because the West Midlands police had warned them against it. Penny finally screened it in a place called the Custard Factory on a dvd. Police arrived 15 minutes into the screening and stopped it, turned on all the lights and came in to “count” the audience (all quietly watching the film). They also took the film crew’s details.

"When the police superintendent was challenged by Penny on Radio 5 Live the next morning, the superintendant claimed that her officers had attended "because we heard there were problems with the projector" (a startling claim in its own right, no less when there was actually no projector...).

"No-one can really figure out what has happened. It is deeply alarming that the police have suddenly switched sides and decided to actively censor the film by persuading cinema owners that public health and safety is at risk."

Copyright

For all sorts of reasons copyright is really the domain of corporations not artists. Taken to extremes it can also make the world mind manglingly complex. Some architects have, for example, been known to say they own the copyright of buildings. What about the telephone box in your shot. That was designed. Shouldn't you pay a fee?

One fascinating example is Woody Guthrie's unofficial American anthem This Land Is Your Land. Guthrie wrote:

"This song is copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

Guthrie published the song in 1945 and it had been around for several years before that (the music was probably written by somebody else and published earlier anyway). 59 years later JibJab, a studio based in Los Angeles, achieved international acclaim during the 2004 US presidential election when its video of George W. Bush and John Kerry singing "This Land is Your Land" became one of the biggest viral video hits in history up to that time.

What happened next was that a company claiming to own the copyright on Guthrie's song said it was going to take legal action, despite the fact that the cartoon contained a parody of the song. This legal action didn't get far but most companies will reach for their solicitors as soon as there is any mention of possible legal action. Lawyers, unlike many people in the film industry, expect to get paid and paid a lot, so this makes even a threat tiresomely expensive.

As the excellent Steal This Film points out copying in a digital age is frighteningly easy. Just to put something online is to copy it. The only way to preserve traditional copyright is to have an increasingly draconian police state, snooping on all highways of communication and stamping out illegal thought.

Those with business models based on achieving copyright for all displays of their material should ask (a) is this practical? (b) is it moral? The answers to these questions seem obvious to me.

Passion and plastic

The way you make a video these days is by passion and plastic. You find a subject that is so amazing that a video just has to be made. Then you put yourself in hock as far as you can go, trying to complete the project. You get as many credit cards as you can and take out as much money as possible from each one: you bash the plastic.

Yet it is quite difficult to make money out of video making. Even if passion and plastic results in a magnificent end product, it may be impossible to capitalise on it.

The professionals (the gate keepers who buy documentaries for tv companies) openly say things like: Don't give up the day job.

If there is a way forward it may include funding from NGOs (charities, campaigning organisations) like the Joseph Rowntree Trust. There is also a need to build collectives of video makers. But this is a hard thing to do. Everyone seems to have their own vision and only to be interested in working on their own project. It's a bit like herding cats.

Stupid story

Met Franny Armstrong, the director of The Age of Stupid environmental shock film, at Sheffield. She's recently got a lot of media attention because she was supposedly saved from mugging by mayor of London Boris Johnson. I asked her about it. "I'm saying nothing about that," was all the tight lipped film maker would reply. I wonder why?

Zero budget broadcasting

Quality, as Robert Pirsig pointed out, is an odd concept: neither subjective nor objective. So when folk start talking about a need for quality to be higher: they are probably bonkers or work in advertising or the media. Sometimes they are both bonkers and work in advertising or the media.

But despite all that you knew what they meant at the Sheffield Documentary Festival when they talked about the need to raise quality. It's tough out there and rapidly getting tougher. There are a lot of good video makers and there will be a lot more quite soon. At the same time the opportunities any of them have to sell the stuff they produce are probably not increasing and may even be diminishing. There are certainly more opportunities to get that video shown than there have ever been, but many of them offer scant reward.

Last year at Sheffield the emphasis was on co-production. That is getting more than one company to pay for a video. This year, the dreaded concept of zero budget videos raised its ugly head.

What this means is that the tv company shows the video for nothing, zilch, rein! Given that many out there are desperate to get their stuff shown, some will agree to this.

I've been here before. Years ago, journalists had nothing to do with public relations agencies. Then they started taking the stuff and re-writing it. Finally they printed it verbatim.

The result of all that was business to business or trade magazines became corrupted. Readers believed everything they saw was an advert. Advertising salesmen got increasing power as it was realised that the readers had stopped reading (why bother?) and it was possible to fill the gaps between the genuine adverts with PR. The salesmen eventually became publishers and took over control from editors. End result magazines became junk mail, many readers put them straight in the bin and advertisers realised they were getting very little for their money and put increasing pressure on the magazines for better deals: like editorial features to back up the advertising.

This ghastly spiral seemed to be unstoppable. Will the same thing happen to TV? I hope not.